Ideogram Generation Route Selection

Overview

Choose the smallest current generation surface that satisfies latency, transparency, prompt, and model requirements. Make route choice explicit so applications do not inherit stale legacy endpoints or accidentally treat synchronous and asynchronous lifecycles as equivalent.

Prerequisites

• An approved use case, prompt and input classification, latency target, output count, and cost ceiling.
• A server-side key, positive credit, durable storage, and content-review policy.
• Current endpoint-specific documentation; generic examples do not override route contracts.

Current Contract

Ideogram documents V4 synchronous /v1/ideogram-v4/generate, V4 asynchronous /v1/ideogram-v4/async/generate, transparent variants, and P-Image sync/async routes. V4 accepts either text or structured JSON prompting; JSON prompting disables magic prompt. V4 FLASH currently returns 400.

Authentication

Send the server-side IDEOGRAM_API_KEY only through the Api-Key header to https://api.ideogram.ai. Never expose the key or direct paid-generation authority to a browser or untrusted tenant.